Is It Time For West Virginia's DEP To Start Doing Its Job?

In a 13-page letter, a group of environmental organizations—the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and the West Virginia chapter of the Sierra Club—has given the EPA 60 days’ notice demanding that the agency reject as inadequate a list of polluted streams that West Virginia’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) recently submitted to the EPA or face a lawsuit. Something like this should have happened long ago. As far as West Virginia and mountaintop removal go, things have been out of whack for a long time.

The law that governs mountaintop removal, the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act (SMCRA), gives to the states the responsibility of issuing permits for mountaintop removal mining. In West Virginia, the DEP issues these permits. Way back in 1997, in the pages of US News and World Report, Penny Loeb first shined the national spotlight on Appalachian mountaintop removal. Even back then she said that the, “DEP's regulations are outdated, its enforcement muscle is puny, and it is constantly reacting to problems rather than heading them off.”

            Whenever the DEP has stepped in to “enforce” the law, most of the time the fines are very low, even for the most serious of violations. The average fine is about $800 per incident. Nearly 80 percent of the fines were reduced after mining companies protested their fines.

            Over 20 years ago, in an investigative report, Charleston Gazette reporter Ken Ward found that the West Virginia DEP did not know the amount of land of the Mountain State the had been permitted for mountaintop removal. The DEP did not even track the number of permits that it granted for mountaintop removal. Ward also found that one third of the acres to be mined by MTR in West Virginia were designated to be reclaimed for “fish and wildlife habitat,” a use that is not allowed under SMCRA.

In this latest development, the West Virginia Legislature, in a bow to the coal companies, passed weaker water quality standards last year. Instead of following protocol and submitting the new standards to the EPA for consideration, the group’s letter says that the DEP “has defiantly taken the indefensible position that [the new standards are] not a revision.” In the Kafkaesque world of West Virginia and coal, West Virginia’s DEP is saying that a revision to the rules is not a revision to the rules, even when the rules change.

The environmental groups contend in their letter that the EPA has the duty to ensure that state agencies properly perform their functions and do not abuse their powers. The group also contends that for the EPA to allow West Virginia to operate as it has gives a clear message to regulators and coal companies that they can continue to disregard our nation’s laws “without consequence.” They urge the agency to intervene in the case of West Virginia or otherwise be subjected to their lawsuit.

I cheer the West Virginia Sierra Club, the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy, the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, and their latest efforts. It is high time that the rule of law apply to the state of West Virginia and its mining companies.

Cap and Trade: Are Environmentalists to Blame For Its Failure in Congress?

Harvard University’s Theda Skocpol has written a post mortem on the cap and trade legislation that failed to pass Congress during Barack Obama’s first term. Accordingly, she recounts the environmental groups expected that serious cap and trade measures could become reality with Obama as President and a Congress that had enough legislators sympathetic to making climate legislation.

            But in her research paper, to be presented at a Harvard forum in February, Skocpol argues that the environmental organizations pushing for the legislation were caught off guard by the extreme GOP stance to their cause in Congress and were left flat footed by the emergence of the Tea Party.

            She compares the failure of cap and trade with the success of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, saying that health care reformers had experienced failure in the past and were willing to correct their strategies, whereas environmental organizations had experienced success—notably the passage of acid rain legislation under the first Bush presidency—and “eagerly anticipated building upon an earlier triumph during another political opening with a sympathetic president and woo-able legislators in both parties.”

            Knowing that Democratic members of Congress from coal and oil producing states would oppose cap and trade, the environmentalists’ plan was to lobby GOP legislators, as they had done in the past, hoping to pull enough of them away from their party’s stance to get the majority they needed.

            That did not happen. The environmentalists goofed. That’s at least how Skocpol surmises the situation.

            I believe that Skocpol is correct in her assessment that environmental groups did not fully anticipate the iron-fisted opposition by the GOP to their cause. And no one could have foreseen the rise of the Tea Party, which sprang up almost like a political deus ex machina and provided the grassroots (at least Astroturf) backing to the GOP/right wing/big business agenda.

            True the Affordable Care Act passed, but just barely. The Senate narrowly averted a filibuster on the bill. The legislation passed the House 219 to 212, with 34 of the no votes coming from Democrats. Had five more Democrats voted against the legislation, its fate would have been the same as cap and trade. The thing to remember is that the legislation received no GOP votes either in the House or in the Senate. No GOP votes. None. Nada.

            The way the press is characterizing Skocpol’s paper is that she is laying blame at the feet of the environmental organizations that worked on passing cap and trade, that they got the political landscape completely wrong. What she says has merit. And she is absolutely correct that environmental organizations need to work harder at engaging the larger public. On the other hand, can environmentalists be fully to blame when they are confronted with a party that has completely lost its collective mind? Can you point the finger at the National Resources Defense Council when Senator Inhofe argues against climate science with quotes from the bible? Is the Sierra Club the bad guy when the GOP fails to act with the barest minimum of responsibility?

The New York Times Eliminates Their Environmental Desk: Is This Bad News?

The New York Times has just announced that they are eliminating their environmental desk, with their environmental reporters and editors being assigned to other departments.

            Despite the tough times that all papers are facing today, the reason for the decision was not budgetary, says Dean Baquet, the New York Times’ managing editor for news operations. Since the desk was established, the paper says that news reporting is more “interdisciplinary,” having multiple aspects, such as business and economics. “They are more complex. We need to have people working on the different desks that can cover different parts of the story,” says Baquet.

            I can’t say for certain that this is a bad move on the part of the New York Times. Only time will tell. I fear that, without dedicated staff, some environmental stories will not make it to the pages of the Times. And, as well, stories about fracking or oil drilling in the Gulf could also lose their environmental focus.

            I don’t believe that the New York Times wants to diminish their coverage of the environment. The paper performed a similar restructuring with their education desk a few months ago. But I am troubled by the rationale that the paper gave for the change, that environmental stories are more “interdisciplinary” and no longer “singular and isolated,” as they had been when the desk was established. The environmental desk was only established in 2009. Have things changed that much in a little over three years to warrant this change? Have the stories of climate change and fracking become less “singular” in three years? Are oil spills more “interdisciplinary” than they had been in 2009? How have stories on efforts to save habitat changed? Are they no longer “singular and isolated?” I just don’t see there being that much change to the news stories on the environment.

We need good news coverage on the environment, and the United States is already underserved by its newspapers and other news sources. I hope that this move by the New York Times doesn’t further diminish our ability to stay informed on what is happening to our environment.

Senator Jay Rockefeller to Retire From Senate: This Is Not a Good Thing

West Virginia Senator Jay Rockefeller announced today that he will not be seeking a sixth term in the Senate, giving the usual line of spending more time with his family as the reason for his retirement from public office.

Rockefeller has, for the most part, been very supportive of the coal mining industry. In 2010 he introduced legislation that would have placed a two-year moratorium on the EPA’s ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. And he has taken no serious legislative action to restrict or slow down mountaintop removal.

            He has nonetheless been good at supporting miners. He says that the Senate achievement of which he is most proud is the measure he sponsored in 1992 that was aimed at preserving retirement benefits for miners and their widows and children.

            Despite his support for coal, the industry and its supporters are now accusing Rockefeller of abandoning them. Rockefeller supports his fellow Democrat, President Obama, who has made efforts to roll back some of the most egregious rule-making left over from the George W. Bush administration that gave coal companies almost carte blanche to tear down mountains, fill in valleys, and pollute the streams of Appalachia.

            It’s hard for me to feel bad about the retirement of a Senator who has supported mountaintop removal and scuttled action on global warming, but with Rockefeller’s retirement, the prospects for the mountains of Appalachia, as well as the health of the planet, may have worsened. Shelly Moore Capito, who currently represents West Virginia’s second congressional district, has vowed to run for Rockefeller’s seat. In a state that has swung from being solidly Democratic to being a GOP stronghold, her success in gaining this Senate seat is most assured. (Indeed, the politics of the state have shifted so far to the right that Rockefeller may have lost to Capito if he has chosen to run for a sixth term.)

Capito co-sponsored the “Stop the War on Coal Act,” that would, among other things, loosen rules for the storage of coal ash and gut aspects of the Clean Water Act. It’s a wish list for the coal industry. She has also authored legislation that would hamstring the EPA’s ability to do its job.

Rockefeller has been no environmental champion, but at least he hasn’t worked to worsen the situation in West Virginia and the rest of Appalachia. With his retirement, it looks like that’s exactly what we will get.

No More Excuses: Let the Children of Appalachia School You About Mountaintop Removal

This is from Appalachian Voices, an organization that works to protect the people and lands of Appalachia. Needless to say, they oppose mountaintop removal. Go ahead watch the video.

I’d like to see this go viral and get more hits than Gangnam Style. All the figures and statistics that that the children tell us, all in less than two minutes, are accurate. They are also frightening. No child should live with these threats to life and health.